


Common Ground

by Berettasalts



Category: Crossover!fic - Fandom, Dangan Ronpa, Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: Gen, M/M, Maybe kinda? idk, Platonic Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-24
Updated: 2015-09-24
Packaged: 2018-04-23 05:54:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4865543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Berettasalts/pseuds/Berettasalts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Byakuya Togami, a man above all others, finds common ground in an unlikely place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Common Ground

**Author's Note:**

> So I've always had this headcanon of Atem needing glasses, and then Togami happened. This is the result. Please bear with me for any canon inconsistencies from DR; it's not my forte. As for Atem, my headcanon has him crowned at a young age and, I believe, keeps a bit more true to ancient Egypt historically.
> 
> Why Dangan Ronpa/Yugioh? Because bite me, that's why.

"Atem, I _told_ you not to touch that. _Twice._ You will not get a third warning."

Togami's eyes glinted accusingly in Atem’s direction, who tried his best not to look guilty and failed miserably. It wasn't that he couldn't behave, but the room inhabited by Byakuya Togami, sole surviving heir to the Togami fortune, was endlessly fascinating to him. Atem's one weakness was and would always be games. Togami's room was a virtual treasure trove of logic puzzles and brain teasers, most of which already lay solved under Atem's skilled fingers. High shelves dominated the west and south walls, opposite the door, and almost all of them were filled with books; though Atem had virtually no interest in those, many of which had foreign titles in languages he didn’t understand. Togami currently had one of them open in his lap, French or some other European language from the look of it, and Atem sat cross-legged in an armchair in the corner of the room. He had deftly maneuvered his way through a series of metallic pocket puzzles with interlocking rings and increasingly intricate design. His fingers brushed again over the last and most complicated one that he had yet to put together, and before he could even contemplate touching it, an icy glare from the bed stopped him.

_“No.”_

Atem scowled. “I’ve never seen you so much as _touch_ this one, let alone _solve_ it.”

“Because I don’t intend to. That’s not why I keep it.”

“That’s ridiculous. Solving it is the entire _point._ ”

“You and I append very different values to many of the same items, Atem.”

Atem opened his mouth to respond with a quip, but intuitively decided against it at the last second; instead, he glanced back towards the desk again as Byakuya buried his nose just a little too quickly in his open volume. On the outside, the little intricate puzzle seemed like any of the other dozen or so interlocking pieces beside it. It was an ostensibly simple design of mechanical loops with an amethyst stone at the center that, to solve the puzzle, had to be moved to the outside. Not very valuable at all, which made him doubt why Togami would prize it. It didn’t seem like him at all to value a worthless scrap of metal with no apparent monetary value.

Atem’s hand drifted down his own chest, coming to rest on the silver pendant around his neck, a simple trinket of his own that had been bought in an airport gift shop. The pendant bore his Egyptian name, and he never took it off. He turned it in his fingers, and it warmed under his hand. The mystery came together at once.

“It was a gift from someone close to you.”

Togami said nothing. Even though he’d shed his jacket and tie, which was about as casual as he was likely to ever get in company, the relaxation in the lines of his body from only seconds ago were gone. His mouth tightened imperceptibly. These telltale clues might have gone unnoticed by anyone who lacked Atem’s acute perceptive ability, but he had spent much of his life reading faces and using expressions and body language to guage the course of action an enemy might take. He’d faced opponents that were far more emotionally void than Togami, in spite of what he would have others believe.

“My younger sister,” he said, after an uncomfortable silence. Atem frowned.

“I thought that you had no siblings.”

“That is, for most intents and purposes, correct. It would be more accurate to say that I have no siblings _left_.”

This time, Atem’s second brow joined the other and surprise registered on his face. He had known that the worldwide incident now generally known (often in hushed and furtive tones) as “The Tragedy” had been responsible for the loss of Byakuya Togami’s remaining family. Atem was also aware of the history of that family before The Tragedy had occurred. Not a single heir with a solid birthright claim to the family’s fame and fortune, but _fifteen_ candidates of varying genders vying for a legal claim to it’s rights; of which the youngest, Byakuya himself, had come out the victor. If he understood correctly, having earned the rights to his family’s legacy while securing a considerable fortune of his own, and having disowned his own siblings after doing so, Byakuya gave a sum total of negative shits what happened to them at that point, beyond never having to interact with them again. Of course, that had changed when he had learned of his family’s deaths, but, not enough to make a difference in the result. When his sisters and brothers had simply been in exile, Byakuya had made it abundantly clear that they were all dead to him anyway. Atem could not imagine why he should suddenly care about them now that they were actually gone. Maybe he had, like all the others, underestimated Togami’s sentimentality.

“What?” Togami demanded in a sharp overtone. “Dial back that sympathetic look, or I will personally remove a vital part of your anatomy and feed it to the Monokuma. It was a long time ago.”

Then again, perhaps not. “I had a younger sister, too.”

Byakuya, uncharacteristically, didn’t reply; he had no idea what to say to that. Like him, Atem had no family left, but Atem's had been gone considerably longer. It was difficult for him to imagine how that must feel, though he could somewhat sympathize - he’d only been spared from The Tragedy himself due to his involvement in the Killing Games. Atem had arrived here through some twisted and inexplicable means that he still did not quite understand (he thought it might involve a quantum effect of some kind, but he could not be sure), and he claimed to barely remember the only family he had.

“Not just the one, of course. My father, as Pharaoh, had many wives and concubines. As the only son of the Great Royal Wife, I was his heir and would become the Living Horus when my father went West, but I had many half-brothers and sisters. Most of them are lost to my memory and to time, but the one who was most dear to me and the one I remember the most clearly, was Amunet, the youngest. We called her Mana. I remember she liked to climb trees. She never had the patience for puzzles, but her nurse was always chasing after her.” He smiled fondly. “She wouldn’t stay still.”

Togami was silent, pretending fascination with an imaginary piece of lint on his sleeve.

“Amelie was French.” His voice was quiet, less forceful than usual, unconsciously mirroring the softer tone Atem himself had affected. “My father had fifteen official children, fifteen candidates that competed with each other for his empire, including myself; but there were others he never acknowledged. From birth, Amelie never spoke a word. She wasn’t deaf, she could hear perfectly and understood three languages just fine. She just, for whatever reason, refused to speak. And because of it my father refused to ever so much as acknowledge her existence.”

Atem didn’t comment, and Byakuya carefully set the book aside and drew his knees into his chest. “I was the youngest of my father’s official offspring, and the second-youngest next to Minnie. We attended the same private school in Cannes. She had no interest in wealth, or in corporate power - not that it would have mattered because my father would never have allowed the Togami Group to go to a mute girl. She liked puzzles and games, a lot like you, actually - and she was highly intelligent.

“I don’t know what became of her. We lost contact after I left Europe.”

“It would seem as though you and I have something in common,” Atem remarked. Togami rolled his eyes.

“Spectacular. I’d like a June wedding, if you don’t mind.”

Atem flashed him a tolerant smile. His fingers were twirling the pendant around his neck idly, and he held it against the light, rubbing the pad of his thumb over the symbols. A cartouche, unless Togami was mistaken. Probably bearing his name. Egyptian pharaohs had been buried with them, because without his name the Pharaoh could not enter the afterlife or join his ancestors in the Field of Reeds. This fate, Byakuya suddenly realized, must be very lonely for Atem. It was bad enough that his own family was gone, but he wasn’t the one who had been raised to believe in an afterlife where his loved ones still waited for his return. To Atem, death was not an end but a transition, and though separated from them, he likely thought of his family as very much alive. Even the fact that he was able to refer to his father and sister in the past tense was a mark of his grasp of the modern age. Egyptians had believed so strongly that the dead lived among them, that they often referred to deceased friends and relatives in the present.

Togami removed his glasses and set them on the bedside table, and pinched the bridge of his nose in a vain attempt to alleviate an oncoming migraine that he could already feel swelling in the base of his skull. Why was he sympathizing? Why should he even care? It wasn’t any of his business what Atem believed. Sure, he considered the man a friend. A good friend. They spent increasing amounts of time together, often in silence and occasionally in quiet conversation. Atem was curious and interested, but he was also _interesting_ in a way that most of Byakuya’s peers were simply not. He still greatly preferred his own company above that of any other, but if anyone ranked a close second or third, it was Atem. That still didn’t account for why he was wasting valuable, potentially productive time on feeling sympathy for him.

So lost he was in his contemplation, that Togami failed to notice when Atem joined him on the bedspread (did Pharaohs have no concept of personal space?) and, without asking, snatched up the glasses beside him. Byakuya squeaked in indignation as Atem placed them carefully on the bridge of his nose.

“Put those _down,_ you ignorant clod!”

Atem smirked at him arrogantly, but his expression changed to one of surprise as he noticed the immediate (and unexpected) difference the lenses made in his vision. All of his surroundings were instantly more sharply defined, including Togami himself. For his entire life, Atem had struggled his way through reading and figures because the letters were often blurred beyond recognition, and it gave him a headache trying to decipher them. He snatched up the book (Byakuya sputtered again) and opened it, scanning the page with his index finger. The letters were almost perfectly clear and legible, much to his surprise. Of course, he had never used glasses before because even though ancient Egyptians had the technology for corrective lenses, and helped to invent the study of optics in fact, they had been primitive and nowhere near as efficient as these.

“That’s it,” Byakuya warned, back on his feet. He pointed a slender index finger firmly at the door. “ _Out._ I warned you.”

Atem had the grace to look chagrined. “I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I didn’t realize they would make such a difference.”

Byakuya frowned. “You’re near-sighted?”

“Is that what you call it? I suppose I always have been. I knew that my vision was flawed, it was why I hated reading,” Atem said. He pushed his fringe out of his eyes and rubbed two fingers against his temple, and again Byakuya felt that annoying stab of sympathy for him. “However, there wasn’t the proper technology at the time to do much for it. I had lenses made for me that helped, but they were more like glass spheres filled with water, and you held them over the page rather than wearing them on your face. They weren’t as simple or efficient as these.” He removed the glasses sheepishly and replaced them. The comparable difference without them, knowing now what it was to actually properly _see,_ was irritating.

“And today? You’ve never bothered to try corrective lenses? Or contacts?” Byakuya raised one dubious eyebrow.

“Like yours? No. Why would I? I’ve never known the difference,” Atem snapped, with some irritation. “I’m used to living without corrected vision, so it’s never bothered me.”

“Well... you certainly can’t have mine.” Byakuya paused, tapping his mouth, and suddenly turned away from the bed, realizing something. “However, I may have an alternative solution.”

He crossed the room in a single, fluid stride and opened a simple chest of drawers. The top drawer was as immaculately organized as his bookshelves. After a few seconds of rifling through it, he produced a small leather case and removed from it a second pair of glasses, similar in design to his own with some minor differences. They weren’t white-framed like his, but a dark reddish-brown, and smaller and rounder in the frames. Atem, surprised but plainly interested, silently held out his hand.

Togami ignored him and took a moment to clean the lenses, and then leaned over, placing one knee on the bed for balance. This time, both of Atem’s eyebrows rose to flirt with his hairline as Togami held the frames delicately at both edges between his index fingers, and fitted them carefully around Atem’s eyes. He’d always thought they were a bright and rather garish red colour, but seen from this close, they were more like a cherry wood grain. Atem sat perfectly still, and his cherrywood eyes fluttered closed at the last moment as Byakuya set the frames gently across the bridge of his nose.

He paused, drew his hands away, and stood back to admire his handiwork. Atem’s eyes opened again. The smirking confidence from his expression was gone, replaced with a simple and startling expression of gratitude. At the moment, he didn’t look so much like a god king. Both of them were descended from royalty, but to look at him now Togami would never have guessed it of the small-boned and delicate young man sitting before him. A deity, hardly. The earthly descendent of the gods? This little man, who could not have been more than twelve or fourteen on the day he was crowned the king of everything? He looked nothing _like_ a king, and certainly less a god. Vertically challenged and vision-corrected, Atem was a man like any other, and the sincerity in his expression was... unsettling.

Byakuya placed a hand on his collar and cleared his throat. “Better?”

“Actually, yes.” Atem sounded surprised even at his own answer.

“Good,” Togami replied, crossing back to the bed and shoving Atem rudely out of his space. “Now you can stop squinting all the time. It’s really quite unseemly.”

Atem’s only response was a warm chuckle, completely unoffended. He wasn’t in the habit of rising to Byakuya’s bait. He removed the lenses from his face to examine them, and then replaced them. “Are you giving these to me?”

“Don’t get excited. They’re just an old pair that I no longer have any use for.”

“I see. Unless I’m mistaken, it’s still somewhat out of character for you to so charitably donate even your cast-offs. Why the sudden goodwill?”

Togami paused, his finger about to turn the page of the book he had retrieved from his bedside table.

“Win them from me then,” he said, in a tone that was deliberately nonchalant even as Atem’s face lit into a wide and delighted grin. A game and a challenge, that was a language he understood. “If you can solve Minnie’s puzzle in five minutes or less, they’re yours.”


End file.
